Allow Me to Introduce: An Insider's Guide to the Occult

PREFACE

I'm a very lucky man. I've endured seventy-two years in relatively good health. I've always managed to reside with my family in a part of the universe that is warm, sunny, and relatively safe. I am blessed to be married to beautiful saint of a wife and father to a brilliant doctor of a son. Month-after-month, year-after-year I somehow scrape up the rent and put food on the table. The DuQuettes live modestly. We've never owned a house, a new car, or a credit card. Considering the fact that I am a bit of a bum, that I possess little ambition, have never made any long-term plans or set any life goals—I am happy as any human being deserves to be.

In 1950 I was lucky when that pain in my hip was Perthes bone disease and not polio.

In 1955, I was lucky to catch the first cultural wave of dawning rock ‘n’ roll and television.

In 1960 I was lucky to be given a guitar.

In 1965 I was lucky to become socially awakened and impelled to involve myself in the peace, and civil rights and social justice movements.

In 1966 I was lucky to be introduced to LSD and the subtle wisdom of the I Ching and the Tao, and the teachings of Lao Tzu and Buddha, Yogananda, Yogi Ramacharakra, Ramakrishna, Vivekananda, Alan Watts and Timothy Leary.

In 1967 I was lucky to become so prophetically inspired while on LSD that I telephoned Constance in Nebraska and proposed marriage. (I was profoundly lucky she said Yes (though she says the jury's still out whether or not she was lucky!)

In 1969 I was lucky to sign an artist/songwriter recording contract with Epic Records.

In 1971 I was lucky when I accidentally enrolled in the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute.¹

In 1972 I was lucky to be amused and fascinated by writings of Aleister Crowley.

In 1975 I was lucky to meet and be initiated by the aging disciples of Crowley's magical orders and formally began my study and practice of Western Ceremonial Magick.

In 1988 I received a phone call from one of my favorite contemporary authors, Christopher S. Hyatt, PhD. A year or so earlier I had initiated him into our local lodge of Ordo Templi Orientis in Newport Beach. He asked if I would care to contribute a chapter to his new book onWesternTantra.² I had never thought about writing anything professionally but it felt like something I might enjoy, so I said Sure! I borrowed a friend's word processor and wrote up a few words that I felt would be appropriate. In 1990 Dr. Hyatt called again and asked if I would be interested in co-authoring a book with him about the magical and qabalistic aspects of Tarot vis-a-vis his Jungian theories on the subject. I told him I was completely unqualified to comment authoritatively and suggested he try someone else. When he asked who? I was hard pressed to come up with the name of a living authority. It dawned on me in the years I had been blissfully studying and practicing this stuff most of my personal mentors had died.

I said, Sure! and for the next two years Dr. Hyatt and I would write four books together, and I would contribute to a handful of other books released by the same publisher. Since then, and for the last quarter century, I've enjoyed wonderful relationships with other fine publishers and have written a number of books on Magick, Tarot, Qabalah, Freemasonry, indeed, whatever subjects I might care to write about.

Over the years, it has been my good fortune to make the acquaintance of some of the most talented and important esoteric writers of my generation, some of whom, from time-to-time, have graciously invited me to contribute introductions or forewords to their books. For me, this is a great honor and privilege. I take these opportunities very seriously because they oblige me to do my best to cut to the chase and distill my thoughts on any particular subject and do it as succinctly as possible. As a literary form, however, such introductory material is often skimmed over or ignored by the reader who is understandably anxious to get on to the meat of the text.

I was sad to think that these short writings would likely remain the most overlooked of all my works. So, I especially want to thank the various authors and publishers of the works represented here for allowing me to share them once again. As the various works span a broad range of magical subjects and decades of my own evolving understanding and opinions I have grouped the essays together in the broadest subject categories, fully expecting the reader not to feel obliged to read the essays in strict order but to jump around as interest and spirit moves. I am leaving it to the reader's wise use of the Contents page to navigate his or her way around.

1 I had been waiting alone in the lobby of the studio while my friend auditioned. Suddenly, John Marley, the famed character actor, stuck his head out of a studio door and shouted, Next! What the hell? I thought and followed him into the bowels of the studio and he introduced me to another great character actor, Gerald S. O'Loughlin, who sat me down and asked me in his best tough New York police detective voice, "So! Why do you wanna be an actah? I don't want to be an actor. I said. I just want to be truthful in living my own drama." I guess that was just the kind of answer a method acting school was looking for. I was accepted without having to audition.

2 Christopher S. Hyatt, PhD, Secrets of Western Tantra. Scottsdale, Arizona: New Falcon Publications, 1989.

PART ONE

TEACHERS, HEROES AND MENTORS

It isn't often life presents us with opportunities to properly express our gratitude and admiration to those individuals, teachers, heroes, and mentors, who for one reason or another have been directly responsible for shaping the quality of our character or the course of our life's trajectory. I can say without hesitation that Aleister Crowley (who died a few months before I was born) and Israel Regardie (who I had the pleasure of meeting and corresponding with) top my list of teachers, heroes, and mentors. I consider it an example of true magical kismet that my life circumstances have conspired to allow me to write about some of the very same works that inspired me in my youth; works that launched me on my fifty-year adventures in magick, writing, and teaching. I feel that it is profoundly appropriate that I begin this anthology of literary appetizers with my introductory words to several of the books that first introduced me to magick in general, and the works of Aleister Crowley in particular.

The Tree of Life

A Study in Magic

FOREWORD FOR THE 2017 EDITION¹

But it is only man himself who may tauten the string of the bow.

—ISRAEL REGARDIE

My life is Magick.² Ultimately, the same can be said of everyone's life for magick in the truest sense of the word is the mechanism of consciousness, and consciousness is the nature of existence itself. Such vaporous musing, however profound and accurate, is a rather obscure way to open a discussion on the theories and practices of modern occultism and not at all what someone is expecting to hear when they ask you, What is Magick?

Since the early 1970s when I was first exposed to it as a spiritual art form, magick in its many varieties has been my passion. This passion soon developed into practice; and mastering the practice continues to be for me an on-going adventure in self-transformation and self-realization. Magick is my Way.

Gradually, over the years, I have been able to share my observations and commentaries on magical subjects in published platforms and (very late in life) these projects have earned for me a modest literary career. Frequently, in my capacity as a practitioner and commentator on the subject of magick, I have the opportunity to travel and discuss my books and hold workshops. Obviously, I am not a shy person, and on long flights, I enjoy talking to the people seated next to me on the plane and learning about their lives. They, in turn, inquire about me and what I do, and I'm always happy to make the attempt. I write, and I'm flying to ________ to lecture about one of my books. Oh really. What kind of books do you write? This is when I agonize as how best to respond. I try to be as truthful as possible but people can be superstitious and fearful and not everyone will be enriched by exposure to things that disturb them for one reason or another. Why spoil the few hours we have together? Perhaps it is best to change the subject to pleasant things in life we have in common, like movies, and food, or bragging about how well our children and grandchildren are doing. But I almost always take the bait and end up saying something like, My newest book is about Magick, tarot cards, and the Hebrew Qabalah.

Dead silence. Blank stare. Or, if I'm lucky, they change the subject. If I'm not lucky they become actually interested and ask, Magick? Oh! That sounds interesting. Tell me about magick.

It's a well-known fact of esoteric life that there is no such thing as Magick 101. Even on a fourteen-hour flight to Beijing it is impossible to properly introduce anyone to Magick. But do I ever learn? No.

After explaining that Magick with a k is not pulling a rabbit out of a hat or sawing a woman in two, I try to start at the beginning. Well do you know about the Sumerians? I might ask. "They were big before the Egyptians . . . very strange folks, the Sumerians . . . well, they saw everything in life as a hierarchy of natural forces that they identified (metaphorically) as gods, angels, and demons which they attempted to influence and control. They organized this unseen population in anal-retentive detail according to their understanding of elements, planetary spheres, zodiac signs . . . bla bla bla. . . .

You've probably heard of the Egyptian Book of the Dead? Right! Well that was really cool—sort of a state-of-the-art how-to manual that taught how to actually manipulate frequencies of consciousness as we pass through phases of the death coma . . . bla bla bla. . . .

The Greeks figured out that existence, time, space and everything, are merely aspects of consciousness . . . bla bla bla. . . .

Then a bunch of very smart Jewish guys (called Qabalists) loved what the Greeks were doing with numbers and started playing with consciousness in breathtakingly elegant mathematical terms, and organized infinite amounts of abstract information in perpetually replicating fractals of alpha-numeric patterns that when observed would explain everything (if we just look hard enough at anything.) . . . bla bla bla. . . .

Christian mystics and ecstatic Islamic saints eventually observed that Love (yes, Love) is the true nature of reality, and that Love can be focused as an actual, objective, living force as tangible as gravity. And if we get really good at falling in Love we can trigger within ourselves the big cosmic awakening that Christ and all the saints and Holy people have been talking about for thousands of years . . . bla bla bla. . . .

Abra-melin the Mage tried to explain it all by revealing that each of us is possessed with a personal god that he called the Holy Guardian Angel which is really the embodiment of the Love force . . . bla bla bla. . . .

Alchemy . . . bla bla bla. . . .

Have you heard of the Rosicrucians? Well, they were like alchemists but with an agenda! Nobody knows who they really were . . . or even if they ever really existed, but I guess it doesn't matter because they wrapped up some of the coolest ideas of Greek hermeticism along with mystic Christianity and by doing so accidentally triggered the Protestant Reformation . . . bla bla bla. . . .

Freemasonry loved all this qabalistic, alchemical and hermetic stuff because it could be rationally and intellectually approached, so they tried to wake up everybody by asking smart folks to look at all everything in life, including politics, from logical and scientific point of view. Soon everyone was realizing how silly and superstitious is was for people to believe that kings and queens were any better than they were, and that it was stupid that nations kept having wars with each other. So, the Freemasons institutionalized everything under the banner of the Universal Brotherhood of Man. Well, that triggered the Enlightenment and inadvertently started the French and American Revolutions . . . bla bla bla. . . .

Oh my God! did I mention the Knights Templar? Now there's a story! . . . bla bla bla. . . .

Elphas Levi said all this stuff should rightly be called Magic! Oh! and, by the way tarot cards are the flash cards of Qabalah and Alchemy and are connected with the Greeks and the Jews and the Knights Templar and the Rosicrucians and the Masons . . . bla bla bla. . . .

MacGregor Mathers . . . bla bla bla. . . .

Golden Dawn . . . bla bla bla. . . .

Aleister Crowley—they called him a Satanist but if he was a Satanist he was a good kind of Satanist!

I hope you're following this. Oh look! We're landing!

Magick is an art form, and would-be magicians (like all would-be artists) either initially resonate to the styles and forms of the art or they don't. You are either touched and fascinated by Magick's mysteries or you're not. If you are so touched, then it doesn't matter what end of the Magick pool you dive into, it's going to be the deep end. No matter where or how you start your journey, that is where you begin.

Today we are blessed (and cursed) with the internet, and with the opportunity to have at our fingertips the collective knowledge of the ages. Technical and philosophical questions that only a few short years ago could have only been answered by visiting a library and combing stacks of books (many needing to be translated), or by enrolling in post-graduate university courses, can now be researched and answered in seconds while sitting in your underwear at home.

It's true. We have the Knowledge of the Ages at our fingertips. But unless we can digest and apply that knowledge for our own enlightenment we have not earned the Wisdom of the Ages. Wisdom is what occult studies are about, and Wisdom doesn't come from reading. Wisdom comes only as the by-product of self-realization and self-transformation, and that's what magick is about.

The occult revival of the late nineteenth century was a watershed for all who resonate with the art of magick. Ignited in part in 1875 by the foundation of the Theosophical Society and the works of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and others, the English-speaking world was introduced to the sublime subtleties of Buddhism, Hinduism, and yoga. Health movements and metaphysical new-thought mutations of Christianity gave progressive adherents permission to think outside the orthodox box. German, French, Russian, and English Rosicrucian societies scoured ancient libraries for medieval grimoires, alchemical and qabalistic texts, and fragments of magical and Hermetic manuscripts written in Greek, and Hebrew and Latin.

In 1888, The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was formed, and (primarily through the efforts of its visionary chief adept, Samuel MacGregor Mathers), ingeniously churned the cream of two-thousand years of esoteric systems and practices, into rich magick butter—a Masonic-style, degree-structured initiatory society—breathtakingly Egyptian in motif, and patently qabalistic in structure. For a few short years, the Golden Dawn served as a one-stop-shopping center of magick, and (for English-speaking aspirants) it was the only game in town.

Unfortunately,